The Open Anatomy Project

Free anatomy atlases

Anatomical knowledge is so important, and so useful, it should be free and
available to everyone.
The Open Anatomy Project at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston is developing new
ways to deliver rich digital anatomy atlases to students, doctors, researchers,
and the general public. Today's anatomy atlases are too expensive and too limited
to serve everyone who needs them. Our open atlases aim to combine the collective
expertise and resources of the world's medical experts into a more accurate and
complete view of anatomy, available to anyone, anywhere, for free.
Project overview

making data public

Over the past twenty-five years, we have worked together with hundreds of physicians,
scientists, and engineers from all over the world to apply the power of medical imaging to
patient care and the understanding of disease. The goal of the Open Anatomy
Project is to pool anatomical information from groups like ours with
thousands of other medical institutions, individual doctors, and other contributors
to create a comprehensive collection of detailed atlases, all available to the public.
History of the project

Meeting with Senegal's Ambassador to Spain and Surgeon General.

Wherever the need

We want to make anatomy atlases available to every student, doctor, or member of the
public who needs them, no matter where they live, how much money they have,
or what language they speak.

Through an international collaboration, we are working closely with colleagues
in Spain and African countries to bring Open Atlas technology into medical
classrooms in Senegal, Mauritania, and Mozambique in order to train the next generation of
African doctors.
More about
the
collaboration

our goal

We want to change the anatomy atlas the same way that Wikipedia revolutionized
the encyclopedia. Our long term goal is to create a non-profit foundation with
the mission to foster the collaborative development and dissemination of free,
open, and multilingual anatomical information.

Until then, we are building a community to create new atlases,
make existing atlases better, write new software such as viewers and
collaboration tools, and develop teaching materials that use the atlases.

Atlases

We currently have six anatomy atlases available, all developed by the
Surgical Planning Lab at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and our collaborators. They include
a detailed brain model based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), an inner
ear atlas created from a high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scanner,
and atlases of the knee, head and neck, and the abdomen.

These atlases are viewed using the Open Anatomy Browser (OABrowser),
a prototype web-based tool that runs in a web browser. Currently,
desktop/laptop versions of the Chrome, Firefox, and Safari web browsers
are supported. We have plans to create an atlas viewer that is mobile friendly.
Technical details

Software

TAViewer

We've developed a web app called TAViewer to explore how
to centralize the medical information scattered around Wikipedia,
Gray's Anatomy, and other online sources of medical knowledge. We
plan to combine TAViewer and OABrowser to produce
an atlas-based graphical index of anatomical knowledge.
Browse
the heart with TAViewer

3D Slicer

Our research group created 3D Slicer, a leading open source
cross-platform medical imaging analysis and visualization platform.
Slicer is developed by a world-wide open source community. We have
used it to produce all of our current atlases. We are working to
add one-click atlas export to Slicer and other medical software.
More about 3D Slicer

Sponsors

The Open Anatomy Project would not be possible without the
consistent and generous support of the National Insitutes of Health,
which has funded multiple research projects in medical image computing
that have produced outstanding data sets and open source software.

In particular, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB),
and the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) before it
has funded the Neuroimaging Analysis Center (NAC) at Brigham and Women's Hospital to
develop new imaging and software technologies to understand the brain. The
SPL/NAC brain atlas is the direct result of this longstanding funding.

How you can help

We are actively seeking technical assistance, medical collaborators, and financial
sponsorship for
continued
development of the Open Anatomy Project, specifically of its education and
charitable mission. We are also extremely interested in collaborating to
create new atlases, or to publish data that could be turned into an atlas.
If you are interested in learning more about the project and how you can help, please contact us.

The Open Anatomy Project
Surgical Planning Laboratory
Department of Radiology